I have a lot of love for the Barbican, and the amount of time I spent there this weekend is probably testament to this.

Last night the His and Hers went to see Master & Margarita (as mentioned before here), the new production by Complicite of Mikhail Bulgakov’s cult novel, and loved every 210 minutes of it. But if one dose of concrete brutalism in one weekend wasn’t enough, we returned today to explore the lesser known parts of the estate.

Guilty of usually hanging around the theatre levels, until very recently I didn’t realise that The Barbican is actually home to the second largest conservatory in London after Kew Gardens. Sat up out of sight on level three, this enormous structure encases multiple levels, over 2000 different tropical plants / cacti, exotic birds and some Koi Carp thrown in just for good measure..

With the exotic birdsong, warmth of the building and the scarcity of any other people in the Conservatory (I swear we saw less than 10 other people the whole time we were there), it’s up there as the ultimate “escape the city” location… pretty much in the heart of the city (it’s also a great “I know London” daytime date spot).

I know a lot of people who claim to “hate” the Barbican without necessarily having explored the estate properly. If you do only one thing, go see the conservatory. Seeing the tropical plants climb and cascade over the balconies of its towers is special, and I’m sure would convert even the most ardent of critics… and if it doesn’t take them to the estate’s brilliantly named hairdressers Cissors Palace, as this at least should put a smile on their face.

And if I haven’t prattled on about its coolness enough, let’s consider it in other terms- there are not too many buildings over 50 years old that have ceiling and lighting design as great as this.

Not your typical garden centre, Petersham Nurseries in Richmond has been on our must visit lists for quite sometime. With a soft spot for gardening, and a quite obvious weakness for great food, its a dream location for this half of the His and Hers.

With the planets aligning perfectly bringing together a day off work, great weather and a table for four being available at short notice, someone was obviously smiling on us.

There’s not a great need for me to do much writing in this post, so I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

With the restaurant famous for its fresh, seasonal produce, to begin we made sure we chose the young veg with houmous – one of the subtle fusions of what has made Petersham famous and the influence of new head chef Greg Malouf, who is renown for his middle eastern food.

Fresh mixed leaf salad with Violas

Grilled poussin with persian spices – I need to learn how to make Bhatura (the bread) it was delicious.